Report says non-Hispanic whites a minority by 2050

February 12, 2008

WASHINGTON (WP) -- By the year 2050, nearly one in five Americans will be foreign-born, 29 percent of the population will be Hispanic, and non-Hispanic whites will become a minority, accounting for only 47 percent of the population, according to a report released Monday. Authors of the study by the nonpartisan, Washington-based Pew Research Center cautioned that their findings were merely projections based on current trends. Nonetheless, the report offers an intriguing picture of the possible long-term effects of the surge in immigration unleashed in 1965, when Congress abolished a restrictive quota system that had all but ended immigration from non-European countries since the 1920s. Immigrants and their U.S.-born children and grandchildren already have accounted for most of the nation's population increase over the last several decades -- as the number of births to U.S.-born women declined, then leveled off. According to the study, by 2025 the foreign-born share of the population will surpass the peak from during the last great wave of immigration, between 1860 and 1920, when foreign-born residents made up as much as 15 percent of the U.S. population. The rising number of immigrants and their children will be largely responsible for a projected 47 percent increase in the overall population from 296 million in 2005 to 438 million by 2050. Due to the aging of the baby boom generation, the number of working-age Americans and their children will still grow more slowly than the nation's elderly population. Between 2005 and 2050, the number of Americans 65 or older will more than double, accounting for 19 percent of the population, compared with 12 percent today. Due to both births and immigration, the share of Asians will also grow, from 5 percent to 9 percent. But it is Latinos, already the nation's largest minority group at 14 percent of the population in 2005, that will see their numbers increase the most: They are projected to triple, accounting for most of the population growth through 2050. Blacks are projected to maintain their current 13 percent share of the population.